Saints’ Williams Allegedly Told Hargrove to ‘Play Dumb’ at BetLM

Saints’ Williams Allegedly Told Hargrove to ‘Play Dumb’

NEW ORLEANS (NFL/Newsfeed) – For­mer Saints defen­sive end Anthony Har­grove was instructed to deny the exis­tence of a bounty pro­gram by Saints assis­tants Gregg Williams and Joe Vitt in 2010, accord­ing to a signed dec­la­ra­tion Har­grove sub­mit­ted to the NFL.

Jason Cole of got his hands on the doc­u­ment, which was sub­mit­ted by the NFLPA in hopes of show­ing that play­ers were only act­ing under orders from coaches to keep the exis­tence of the bounty pro­gram quiet.

“Those [exple­tives] have been try­ing to get me for years,” Williams allegedly told Har­grove, refer­ring to the NFL. “Stay on the same page, and this will blow over.”

Assis­tant head coach Joe Vitt and Williams report­edly told Har­grove mul­ti­ple times to deny the exis­tence of any bounty pro­gram to the NFL, with Vitt remind­ing Har­grove that he brought Har­grove into the NFL and to the Saints, and both men telling Har­grove to “play dumb.”

Har­grove did just that in his 2010 meet­ing with NFL Secu­rity. A week later, Williams asked Har­grove: “Did you stick to the story?”

The answer was “yes.” That helped stall the NFL’s inves­ti­ga­tion for two more years until the bounty scan­dal exploded this off­sea­son. Hargrove’s state­ment wound up being a cen­tral piece of evi­dence the league used when hand­ing down player punishments.

Vitt strongly denied the alle­ga­tions in a story reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday.

“At no time did I ever tell Anthony Har­grove to lie or deny the exis­tence (of the alleged bounty pro­gram),” Vitt said. “He can say what­ever he wants to say. It just didn’t happen.

“We had a pot for big plays, the same thing every­one else in the league has, now they call them pay-for-performance. But we never paid for dirty hits,” Vitt said. “I’ll say it again, the exact same thing I told the com­mis­sioner, our play­ers never crossed the white lines with an intent to maim or injure. They never threat­ened the integrity of the game when they crossed the white lines.”

Just when you think the Saints bounty pro­gram story is wind­ing down, we learn a lit­tle more. The whole story has yet to be told.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NFL news see: Saints’ Williams allegedly told Har­grove to ‘play dumb’.

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